The Northern Ireland Assembly spent several hours on Monday debating the future of the health service. John McFall, the Scottish MP who holds the health portfolio in the Northern Ireland Office, presented the British government's proposals. He spoke of a crisis in hospital services in the North and highlighted the fact that many accident and emergency units do not meet required medical standards.
Tough decisions will have to be made about the future of health care in the North. The official view is that there are too many small hospitals, many of which cater inadequately for patients' needs. The Northern Ireland Office wants to see six large group hospitals built as "centres of excellence".
Two of these will be in Belfast and, at the moment, only one is planned for west of the Bann. Sam Foster of the UUP spoke for many members of the Assembly when he warned against the dangers of downgrading small local hospitals, and promised this would be resisted "tooth and nail".
Such debates do not command headlines, but they are the proper stuff of politics. Health is one of the areas of responsibility which is due to be returned to the Assembly in Belfast, if and when power is devolved early next year.
That, of course, depends on the setting up of an executive. Dr Joe Hendron, the SDLP's spokesman on health, made the point that the crisis in health services underlines the urgent need for the executive to be established, so that Northern Ireland's politicians can "truly face up to" their responsibilities.
£732 million sterling will be made available to the Assembly for spending on health over the next three years. That is one reality of the present situation in Northern Ireland which is worth remembering at a time when the air is loud with dire warnings that the whole peace process could unravel.
Politics is not just concerned with constitutional questions and who holds the textual or moral high ground on the issue of decommissioning arms. In any normal society, elected representatives are more concerned with making the case for a hospital to be saved, or a new school to be sited in their constituency, rather than with the arguments for making a token hand-over of explosives.
Many working politicians in Northern Ireland are savouring, for the first time, the prospect of being able to practise these aspects of their trade. From David Trimble and Gerry Adams down, they will not want to see this opportunity disappear.
I have written before in this space of the seductive allure of power and patronage, and the effect this is likely to have on efforts to secure the peace in Northern Ireland.
One has only to look at the scale of activity at Stormont to understand that many people now have a vested interest in the swift devolution of real powers to a new executive.
It is not just the fact that there are 108 Assembly members who are receiving annual salaries of £35,000, generous expenses and the prospect of earning further allowances as members of the various committees that will be set up.
We have seen, only this week, in the wrangle between Bob McCartney and his rebellious party members, that elected politicians are, quite realistically, reluctant when it comes to resigning from their positions.
Their purpose is to be able to influence the future shape of events. These particular unionists, who boycotted the talks that led to the Belfast Agreement, have learnt the hard way that self-imposed exclusion brings few rewards.
There are others who will benefit from the expansion in politics that will take place as soon as an executive is set up and powers are devolved to the Assembly.
If all goes well, there will be the setting up of a British-Irish council, the establishment of a civic forum and of permanent commissions on human rights and equality. All will require politicians to serve on them and officials to service the politicians.
Beyond this again, there will be decisions to be made about the deployment of money and resources. There will be factories to be sited, and new wings to be opened in technical colleges and ribbons to be cut on bridges and by-passes.
Some of these ceremonies will be performed by ministers, but much of the credit will go to local politicians. Always depending, of course, on their being able to agree on the setting up of an executive and the other steps necessary for the devolution of powers.
If all this sounds cynical, that is not my intention. Such politics are the necessary basis of a healthy society living at ease with itself. Northern Ireland's leaders have worked long and hard to get to the point of setting up the structures that will make the practice of ordinary, humdrum politics possible.
Both governments know that if peace can be secured by the devolution and sharing of power the benefits, social and economic, will be literally incalculable. Nobody is likely to grudge, at least in the short term, the cost of making the new structures work.
We are, just now, at another moment of gloom in the peace process. There have been dire warnings that progress towards normal politics in Northern Ireland could be at risk if there is not progress before Christmas on the setting up of cross-Border bodies. Beyond that there looms the obstinate hurdle of decommissioning.
Inevitably, there have been accusations from the political leaders on both sides of a failure on the part of the other to honour the Belfast Agreement.
But if there is one thing which binds David Trimble, John Hume, Gerry Adams and Seamus Mallon, it is a shared commitment to politics as the only way forward for Northern Ireland. Already both sides have made major concessions in coming this far. It is not simply the question of escaping from the violence of the past, though that is obviously a key priority. As important is the fact that the future decisions about Northern Ireland should be arrived at through dialogue and debate between the politicians and people who live there.
That is why the kind of debate which happened on Monday, which attracts little attention in the media, is as important for the future as the ceremony in Oslo which celebrated the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to John Hume and David Trimble.